2009

Brenden Dillon is a late bloomer. And in some ways it is no surprise. He got a bit of a late start on his junior hockey career.

He was passed over in the Western Hockey League’s Bantam draft, which Dillon was eligible for the year he would turn fifteen. The reason he was overlooked? He was too small.

“I remember the whole thing. I was sitting with my dad, we were watching it on the computer screen, 15 rounds went by and I had been passed over,” Dillon said of the WHL draft. “It was one of those things where everyone was over six feet tall and I was there at 5-2.”